IBM I Strategy and Roadmap

IBM i

An executive guide to IBM’s strategy and roadmap for its integrated operating environment for Power Systems

An IBM® White Paper

IBM i Strategy and Roadmap

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Introduction

IBM i is the integrated operating environment for IBM Power Systems™, which is used by over 150,000 businesses around the world. The integrated database architecture of IBM i, with its heritage in the AS/400, iSeries and System i, provides a foundation for running a wide variety of industry applications, and helps businesses deliver services faster, with higher quality and with superior economics.

In 2008, IBM brought together System i and System p® into a unified POWER processor-based platform: IBM Power Systems. In 2010, IBM delivered new POWER7 processor-based systems, a new release of IBM i, and enhancements across our Power Systems Software portfolio, including PowerVM virtualization and PowerHA resiliency software. Our IBM i clients can take full advantage of IBM’s leading processors, servers, storage and software portfolio.

We prioritize our IBM i strategy and new capabilities based on requirements and feedback on business value from our client advisory councils: representing mid-sized companies, large enterprises and our solutions providers. Their input and our technology investments have ensured that our IBM i clients are in the mainstream of major industry initiatives including business analytics, cloud technologies, and enterprise application modernization. Colin Parris General Manager This white paper is designed to help IT executives understand of our IBM Power Systems strategy and roadmap for the IBM i operating environment.

You will find that our commitment to our IBM i clients, ISVs and business partners is solid and unchanged. We continue to make substantial investments in the future of IBM i as an important, strategic element in our IBM systems portfolio.

Colin Parris General Manager, IBM Power Systems

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Smarter Computing and IBM i

The planet is getting smaller, flatter and smarter every day. Global market segments are connected as never before. Economic shock waves, both good and bad, travel the globe in nanoseconds. Newer, smarter technologies arrive daily. New business models are born, and old ones die, in the blink of an eye. Things we never thought of as computers - cars, clothing, appliances, electrical grids, traffic systems and supply chains - are now instrumented for intelligence. These intelligent objects, systems and processes are generating data that reveals just about anything, from large and systemic patterns to the location, temperature, security and condition of practically every item in a global supply chain. With this knowledge, we are able to lower costs, reduce waste, and improve the efficiency, productivity and quality of systems, companies, cities and more.

Smarter companies are thinking differently about computing and how to deal with data that is growing exponentially and which can become stagnant and unexploited simply because of its sheer volume. These companies are embracing smarter computing to break the vicious cycle of untrustworthy data and server sprawl. They are creating IT infrastructures that are designed for data, harnessing information to unlock business insights and make better, more informed choices. Their IT infrastructures are tuned to the task of their business challenges, with optimized systems that combine hardware, software and industry domain knowledge or expertise. And they are managing their IT infrastructure with cloud technologies, accelerating the provisioning and delivery of services.

In this new smarter computing era, forward-thinking companies consider more than server performance, existing skills and ease of management when choosing a platform for new application workloads. They also evaluate how well the platform will help them achieve three core business objectives: delivering services to their business faster, with higher quality, and superior economics.

By implementing their business applications on the IBM i platform, companies can outpace their competitors by delivering services faster. They can differentiate their offerings from the competition by delivering higher quality services. And they can turn operational cost into investment opportunity by delivering services with superior economics.

Power Systems

For many years IBM offered two major server platforms for its IBM i and AIX® (UNIX) customers: System i (formerly AS/400) and System p (formerly RS/6000®). In the early 1990s, IBM successfully consolidated its investments in the POWER processor, server and software technologies so that they could be exploited by both platforms. In 1997, for example, they first shared the same POWER processors and in 2000, they used the same remote I/O bus architecture. In 2004, they shared the system chassis designs, as well as the first common PowerVM hypervisor that supported virtualization for all three POWER operating environments: AIX, IBM i and Linux. Even though they shared many common components, the two systems continued to

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be sold as two distinct platform offerings, focused on two separate market segments, with different terms and conditions.

In April 2008, System i and System p were unified into the new Power Systems platform: a single product line that runs AIX, IBM i and Linux applications. The new Power Systems offered common pricing for hardware components, common I/O options, and common terms and conditions, including for maintenance and support. The result has been that the new Power Systems platform is simpler for customers to buy, and simpler for ISVs and business partners to sell and support. It also has ensured that companies using IBM i applications are positioned in the mainstream of IBM’s server and storage technology investments, alongside companies that use AIX and Linux. Now, when IBM ships a new Power Systems server, it provides concurrent support for all three operating systems, which has accelerated access to new technology for IBM i clients.

The current Power Systems servers, blade and compute node portfolio feature POWER7 processors and the latest IBM i 7.1 release. Clients can easily upgrade from earlier releases of IBM I, preserving the decades long heritage of binary compatibility and application investment protection. In fact, some companies still run applications on today’s POWER7 systems that were first written on the System/38 in 1979, without change or recompilation.

With the recent announcement of IBM PureSystems servers, IBM i continues to be in the forefront of Power Systems technologies. Clients choosing an IBM PureFlex Server may select IBM i as their Operating System of choice.

In addition to common hardware technologies, Power Systems offers common platform software technologies, such as PowerVM for server virtualization, PowerHA for high availability, and IBM Systems Director for platform and energy management. Using common platform software technologies with AIX and Linux, again better positions IBM i in the mainstream of IBM’s systems software portfolio.

The Power Systems platform offers businesses a highly flexible deployment platform for new applications. With a wide variety of IBM i, AIX and Linux applications to choose from, it is easier than ever before to optimize workloads deployed across multiple operating systems on the Power Systems platform.

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The Value of IBM i

IBM i running on an IBM Power Systems server offers a highly scalable and robust architecture with a proven reputation for exceptional business resilience and low operational costs. Running applications based on IBM i has helped companies over many years to focus on innovation and on delivering new value to their business, not on managing their data center operations.

IBM i provides a fully integrated and optimized combination of relational database, trusted role and object based security model, as well as integrated networking and storage management capabilities required to run business applications. The integrated SQL standards-compliant DB2® for IBM i database includes advanced database management utilities. IBM i also includes additional integrated middleware components such as multiple file systems, directory, an HTTP Web-server powered by Apache, a Web application server and a Web-services environment.

IBM’s integration, optimization and testing of IBM i is a key factor in allowing companies to realize lower operations costs by enabling them to deploy applications faster and maintaining them with fewer staff. IBM develops, fully tests and pre-loads the core middleware components of IBM i together, up front; whereas, on other platforms, the operating system, database and middleware are typically integrated and tested by clients in their data center.

This broad and highly stable database and middleware foundation is ideal for efficiently deploying business applications, with support for over 2,300 solutions from over 850 ISVs. IBM i solutions are offered through an extensive, highly skilled worldwide network of certified IBM Business Partners that is backed by IBM’s trusted services and support infrastructure.

Virtualization also enables businesses with IBM i to consolidate and run multiple applications and components together on the same system, driving up system utilization and delivering a better return on IT investments. IBM i has included subsystem virtualized workload management within the operating system since 1979, which enables application components to be assigned different runtime priorities and resource allocation within a single operating system image. IBM i also takes advantage of scalable and secure PowerVM server virtualization, which enables multiple operating system images to run on a single server in separate virtual machines or ‘logical partitions’. PowerVM also features dynamic resource allocation and balancing, extensive virtual I/O capabilities, and live partition mobility to move active workloads between servers.

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IBM i Marketplace

The IBM Power Systems family offers the latest POWER7 processor-based systems supporting small, mid-sized, and enterprise clients, on everything from a four-core blade, to some of the largest and fastest 256-core servers in the industry.

IBM i is used by over 150,000 companies in more than 115 countries around the world to run their business applications. It is primarily used for transaction processing workloads such as ERP and banking applications that exploit its integrated database. It is designed explicitly for commercial workloads like warehouse management or retail banking, not high performance computing workloads like oil exploration analysis or weather forecasting. IBM i is typically used in industries such as wholesale distribution, retail distribution, manufacturing, banking and financial services, insurance, travel & transportation, media and entertainment (e.g. music publishing and casino management), local government, school administration.

The IBM i market has a dual nature: an extensive small and mid-sized customer community and a strong but select group of IBM i users in large enterprises. Approximately seventy percent of IBM i users are small and mid-sized enterprises and thirty percent large enterprises with over 1000 employees.

IBM i has a strong install base in major markets, like North America, Western Europe and Japan, which accounted for approximately 80% of IBM i sales in 2011. IBM i is also successful, in emerging growth markets such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the ASEAN region, especially in the banking and distribution sectors. While China is a growth market strongly dominated by UNIX, IBM i also has a strong presence there in the banking and financial services sectors.

In 2011 approximately 85% of IBM i shipments were on the entry IBM Power 720 and Power 740 systems, servers that are ideal for mid-sized companies. In large companies, IBM i generally is run in the data center on highly virtualized, enterprise class systems like the Power 770 and 780 systems. Large companies highly value the exceptional system resiliency and capacity on demand features of the high-end Power systems that scale up to 256 cores on the largest Power 795 model.

Through the IBM Academic Initiative for Power Systems, IBM has built strong local relationships between universities, colleges, clients, partners, Independent Software Vendors, and user groups to help ensure IT professionals have the skills needed to meet the needs of the IBM i ecosystem. Currently there are over 500 colleges and universities in over 40 countries participating in the program.

IBM i and Mid-sized Companies

Many thousands of mid-sized companies around the world rely on IBM i because they want a more resilient, more secure and more cost efficient alternative to Windows-based servers for their most important business data and applications.

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Mid-sized companies need both to maximize their IT investments and to exploit them as they grow. Unlike Windows-based servers, the IBM i operating environment is almost always used to run multiple business applications and database securely and efficiently on the same server. As a result, clients always report that they have fewer servers to manage with IBM i compared to Windows. That helps a company better utilize its IT assets today, while avoiding the costs of deploying and managing a new server every time the business needs another application.

Since their focus is on growing their business, mid-sized companies need proven solutions, and experts that know their industry. The thousands of solutions that run on IBM i are sold through an extensive network of experienced solution providers who have successfully demonstrated their ability to help small and mid-sized companies solve business issues. Experienced IBM i solution providers deliver business value beyond the installation and patch management that is typical for Windows-based servers.

Of course, mid-sized companies are also focused on improve productivity and keeping operating costs low. Deploying IBM i solutions can help businesses improve employee productivity and customer service by securely integrating information from across the company into its built-in database. Unlike Windows-based servers, IBM i has an all-in-one system design that helps integrate the wide range of information and processes that lie behind a successful business.

A top priority for all growing companies is to keep the business up and running, and it is especially important for those companies delivering information and services to their customers on the Web. Over many years and in many businesses, IBM i has developed a well-earned reputation as the business system that “just keeps running”. It helps companies avoid down time and keep their business secure.

For companies running Windows-based servers, security and virus management are major challenges in terms of time and money. Compare that with the simple-to-deploy security of the IBM i platform. Its virus resistant design helps companies keep their business more secure, safeguarding data against hackers with built-in intrusion detection.

There are many communities and user groups that represent mid-sized companies using IBM i. These include COMMON US, COMMON Europe, the Intermediate Systems User Group in Japan, and numerous other local user groups and online communities around the world. IBM meets regularly with the COMMON Americas Advisory Council, and COMMON Europe Advisory Council to understand and prioritize requirements for future releases of IBM i. Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, CIO of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, and member of the CAAC, notes that “the collaborative discussions between the CAAC and IBM refine user requirements and prioritize them for inclusion in future releases. The end result benefits the entire IBM i community.”

Large Enterprises and IBM i

Originally the AS/400 was deployed in large enterprises as part of a ‘distributed computing’ model to support departmental or regional business operations outside their main datacenter

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environment. The distributed system model offered large companies the flexibility and cost effectiveness of deploying local line of business applications, with line of business data that was then consolidated back to a central mainframe in the datacenter.

Patterns of use of IBM i in large enterprises, however, have dramatically changed over the past decade. With significant changes in networking costs and dramatic advances in server virtualization technology, large enterprises have taken advantage of significant cost savings by consolidating their distributed servers back into the datacenter. Now, large enterprises typically run IBM i for high volume transaction processing on fewer, highly virtualized systems.

The trends for storage architecture and deployment have also changed for large enterprise users of IBM i. For many years, IBM i users typically used internal storage, optimized for transaction processing with high performance internal storage adapters. Today, the trend for large users is balanced with a growing use of storage area networks, such as IBM DS8000 and IBM V7000. This trend has brought IBM i users into the mainstream of datacenter strategies for both storage area networks and its associated software like IBM Flashcopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror.

The community of large enterprises using IBM i is represented by the aptly named Large User Group (LUG), a client sponsored group of over 100 major companies that use the IBM i platform. The LUG provides a forum for IT professionals from large enterprises to exchange information about topics of particular interest and to discuss strategy and requirements for the IBM i platform.

Business Partners and ISVs

IBM i is offered through a strong network of local, regional, and national IBM Business Partners. Since the introduction of the AS/400 in 1988, Business Partners have played an integral role in the sales, installation, and support of IBM i-based systems. IBM Business Partners have consistently been responsible for over 80% of IBM i system sales. Not only are these partners trained and certified on Power Systems servers and IBM i, but they also bring their own specific industry expertise, as well as offering a wide range of IT services.

The AS/400 was launched as an Application System, delivering thousands of application solutions to small and mid-sized business. This solution focus remains strong today, with the majority of IBM i customers running a solution from an Independent Software Vendor. These solutions are offered by a wide range of partners from global ISVs such as Infor, SAP, and Oracle JD Edwards, as well as from key regional solution providers such as Misys, Fiserv, and Silverlake. IBM i also has a very strong group of solution providers focused on high availability, security and compliance, application development and modernization, printing solutions, and systems management. Today, more than 2,300 applications from over 850 independent software vendors are supported on the latest release of IBM i 7.1.

POWER Processor Technology

IBM has a consistent track record of delivering on its POWER processor roadmap for IBM i, AIX, and Linux operating environments. The current POWER7 processor-based servers offer

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the fastest processors in the industry. From four to 256 core servers, POWER7 processor-based systems offer the performance and scalability to meet the varied requirements of IBM i clients.

In 2010, IBM delivered a POWER7 family of systems that extended from blades to high-end systems, all supporting AIX, IBM i and Linux. These POWER7 systems were further enhanced with new models announced in 2011, offering greater memory capacity and latest I/O capabilities. A strong advantage for the Power architecture is its range of scalability, so that it can be used for small companies wanting to run an entry ERP solution, to mid-sized companies deploying business analytics solutions, to large banks running core financial services operations.

IBM i 6.1.1 and 7.1 are supported on POWER7 processor-based servers. With binary compatibility, clients are easily able to deploy new systems based on POWER7processors without changing, recompiling or re-optimizing their applications.

IBM i Software Roadmap

For many years, IBM had a practice of delivering a major IBM i software release approximately every two years. Feedback from IBM i clients, however, was that upgrading to new software releases required extensive testing, and in some cases certification to adhere to local compliance regulations. In response, IBM has extended the period between major releases, providing regular IBM i Technology Refreshes that enable new capabilities without requiring a release upgrade. IBM has also increased the support lifecycle for major releases. IBM i 7.1 was made available in April 2010, for example, and since then IBM has delivered Technology Refreshes approximately every six months. Technology Refreshes do require IBM i 7.1 and cannot be applied to earlier IBM i releases.

IBM i Technology Refreshes enable IBM to both provide support for new hardware, and to enhance system software and virtualization capabilities. For example, some of the key enhancements delivered via Technology Refresh are simplifying the installation of new virtual images from stored images on the network (TR1), support for virtual image suspend / resume (TR2), enabling Virtual Partition Manager to create of IBM i virtual images with virtual I/O (TR3), and providing Live Partition Mobility between servers (TR4 May 2012).

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IBM i 6.1

IBM i 6.1 was a key release that was delivered at the same time as the new Power Systems product line in 2008. The release integrated and optimized IBM i capabilities with IBM’s broader strategies for blades, storage, virtualization and platform management. For example, the release supported running IBM i on a POWER processor-based blade, enabling the consolidation of i and x86 workloads within a single IBM BladeCenter®. It also included significant investments for SANs that optimized IBM i for IBM System Storage servers – both via direct fibre channel attachment and through the PowerVM Virtual I/O Server. It also provided the foundation for a new disk clustering solution, IBM PowerHA, that provides a cost effective and simple-to-operate high availability and disaster recovery solution. A new optimized IBM Java Virtual Machine (JVM), shared with AIX and Linux, also provided significant increases in web application performance.

IBM i 7.1

Available since 2010, the highlights of the current IBM i 7.1 release included enhancements and extensions to many of the core functions. Native support for XML was included into the integrated DB2 database, enabling easier storage and searching of XML documents and data. DB2 for IBM i was enhanced to provide column level data encryption. PowerHA added support for asynchronous replication, extending the disk clustering-based disaster recovery solution over longer distances. Solid State Disk (SSD) drives can be utilized automatically, with the operating system moving frequently accessed data for optimal application performance. IBM RPG, a common language for transaction processing application development, was enhanced to simplify integration with a broad range of client applications and devices, including web services, mobile devices and XML.

IBM i Support Life Cycle

IBM’s software support and life cycle strategy reflects the fact that most companies using IBM i run their most critical business applications on the platform. This strategy includes the practice of supporting an IBM i release until the next two releases have been made available, plus at least twenty four months – which translates to approximately six years of support. Automated operating system upgrades are available to easily move up to the next two releases providing for an ongoing supported IBM i environment. For example, customers running IBM i 5.4 or 6.1 can easily upgrade to IBM i 7.1.

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IBM i 5.4, 6.1 and 7.1 are currently supported releases. It has been announced that support for IBM 5.4 will end with effect from 30th September 2013. For clients that need additional time to migrate to a supported release of IBM i, IBM intends to announce a fee based extended service offering for IBM i 5.4.

IBM i Strategies

Systems Storage

Traditionally, the majority of IBM i users have deployed integrated or internal storage, that was managed and optimized directly by the operating system. The use of high speed RAID adapters, ensured that internal storage provided optimal performance, especially for high volume transaction processing applications, Over time, however, more IBM i clients have adopted storage area networks, or external storage that is managed both by the operating system and the SAN server. Investments in SAN optimization in IBM i 6.1, ensured that performance is now comparable between internal and external storage.

To support the growing demand for SAN capabilities, IBM i now supports a wide range of storage servers, including the IBM DS3000, DS4000®, DS5000, DS6000™, DS8000®, Storwize V7000, XIV, and SVC storage solutions. IBM i offers direct fibre channel support for selected SAN solutions and leverages PowerVM Virtual I/O Server to support a broad range of other SAN solutions.

In addition, the introduction of Solid State Drives with their ultra-fast I/O performance has enabled many IBM i users significantly to reduce the run-times of their daily, weekly, and monthly batch jobs. IBM i features intelligent and automatic data placement, placing the most frequently accessed data onto the SSDs and managing a hierarchy of storage options.

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Server Virtualization and Cloud Technologies

IBM i has a heritage of virtualization technology going back over 40 years. The operating system design featured subsystems that enabled multiple applications to run separately in a single system image. Originally, subsystems were used to differentiate interactive and batch applications, but over time they have grown to be used for assigning priorities and system resources to a wide variety of processes and services.

In 1999, IBM also introduced the first PowerVM logical partitioning technology, enabling separate virtual machines to run on the same Power Systems server. PowerVM, which ships on over 90% of Power System mid-range and high-end servers, provides scalable and secure server virtualization for AIX, IBM i, and Linux environments. PowerVM features micro-partitioning with up to 10 partitions per core, live partition mobility between servers (available with IBM i 7.1 TR4 May 2012), dynamic or automatic movement of processor and memory resources, and a wide range of I/O virtualization capabilities, PowerVM and IBM i subsystem virtualization are both extensively used by IBM i clients and a key driver of lower operations costs.

PowerVM virtualization also provides the foundation technologies for implementing cloud computing. The unprecedented interest in and projected IT spend on cloud computing is coming from all types of organizations, businesses and governments who are seeking to transform the way they deliver IT services and improve workload optimization so they can respond to changing business demands. Cloud computing can significantly reduce IT costs and complexities while improving workload optimization and service delivery.

Implementing a private cloud with IBM i can help reduce administrative tasks and improve productivity by enabling you to automate provisioning of resource requests from authorized users. It helps improve compliance and reduce errors by enabling you to standardize deployments and configurations while leveraging approval policies to maintain oversight and the optimal performance of your cloud, while workload metering capabilities support a transition to pay-per-use business models. By deploying an effective cloud computing environment, you enable organizations to reduce IT costs, improve service delivery and enable business innovation.

Resiliency and High Availability

There are two approaches to providing high availability / disaster recovery solutions for IBM i – logical replication and hardware clustering. Both solutions replicate data from a production system to a backup system and enable switching (also known as a role swap) between the two systems in the event of an outage on the production system.

IBM PowerHA provides a disk clustering solution for IBM i. PowerHA is an easy-to-manage clustering solution that makes it simple to switch between systems, is easy to maintain, and is supported directly by IBM. As more IBM i customers transition to storage area networks, PowerHA also offers the advantage of a resiliency solution that that is tightly integrated with both the IBM i operating system and IBM System Storage servers and software.

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Logical replication solutions are available from ISVs that base their software on the remote journaling capability of the IBM i operating system. These ISVs include Vision Solutions, Maxava, Traders, and Rocket Software.

With both disk clustering and logical replication options, IBM i clients continue to have a broad range of choices for their high availability and disaster recovery needs.

Business Analytics and Optimization

Studies show that organizations that apply analytics outperform their peers. And those with a high “Analytics Quotient” – that is, a broad-based, analytics-driven culture – perform, on average, three times better. Business analytics helps organizations to recognize subtle trends and patterns allowing them to anticipate and shape events and improve outcomes. Not only is it possible to drive more top-line growth and control costs, but risks are more easily identified upfront, allowing correction before derailing business plans.

IBM business analytics software enables organizations to apply analytics to decision-making, anytime, anywhere. IBM i clients can better analyze their data to reduce costs and improve service across their business with DB2 Web Query for IBM i. IBM in cooperation with Information Builders offers a full suite of query, reporting, OLAP, and dashboard technologies to meet a wide variety of business intelligence solutions. With DB2 Web Query, customers have fast access to current data, while avoiding the complications of offloading data to another system. Clients using the IBM i platform also often implement IBM Cognos business intelligence and SPSS predictive analytics solutions, which are deployed on AIX running on the same Power Systems server with PowerVM.

Enterprise Modernization

While many IBM i clients run industry specific applications from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), many clients also develop and maintain their own applications, IBM i offers a broad choice of development languages including RPG, COBOL, C, C++, Java, PHP, and EGL. Typically, Java and PHP are used to develop web actions, whereas RPG and COBOL are used for transaction processing applications. IBM i has an integrated language environment, which makes it simple to mix and match languages to fit application requirements.

IBM Rational software provides compilers and a range of development tools and enterprise modernization capabilities for IBM i. Based on the Eclipse standard, Rational Developer for Power and Rational Team Concert for Power help maximize developer productivity and application deployment. Additional application development tools for IBM i are available from tool providers such as LANSA, BCD, looksoftware, Arcad, and Databorough.

Given that many IBM i clients use RPG and COBOL for their core transaction processing applications, IBM is committed to invest in and support these languages on IBM i. IBM Rational recently introduced RPG Open Access that enables RPG to directly interface with a

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wide range of new devices and resources. IBM’s statement of commitment to the RPG and COBOL languages for IBM i can be found on the Rational Website.

For clients extending their application portfolio to include Java or the web, IBM i is tightly integrated with the IBM WebSphere portfolio of products. IBM WebSphere Application Server Express ships as part of IBM i, allowing easy installation, configuration and management of web application serving.

IBM has also worked with Zend to deliver the popular open source scripting language, PHP, for IBM i. The Zend PHP product is preloaded with IBM i, providing the PHP runtime and a toolkit to provide easy access to IBM i applications and data. With PHP, clients can easily develop web applications that tie into IBM i DB2 data and applications.

Systems Management

Systems Management is a broad term used when referring to the ability to configuring hardware and software, allocating resources, distributing workload, monitoring performance, maintaining security and access to the system, capacity planning and other tasks pertaining to efficient resource allocation.

IBM i has had a long history of excellent interfaces for managing and monitoring systems. For the past several years, IBM i system managers could choose from a few options, depending on what they wish to manage – hardware, software or both.

The IBM Systems Director Navigator for i offers an easy-to-use, web-based management solution for a single IBM i server environment. IBM System Director provides the ability to manage multiple IBM i systems as well servers running AIX and PowerLinux. Systems Director also provides extensive capabilities for server monitoring, health checking, and virtualization management. Active Energy Manager is an extension to Systems Director that provides for the reporting, monitoring, and control of energy use in the data center, which integrates with the EnergyScale features of the POWER7 processor. There is also a wide range of additional integrated service management tools available from IBM Tivoli software, as well as from IBM i focused management tools providers such as Help/Systems, Halcyon, Centerfield Technology, and Midrange Performance Group.

IBM i Community Resources

In addition to the user groups referenced earlier in the paper, there are a wide range of resources available to the IBM i community.

 The developerWorks IBM i zone is aimed at technical professionals, containing a wide variety of easily accessible technical articles, tutorials, new release and IBM i Technology Refresh information.  The You and i blog by Steve Will, the Chief Architect of IBM i, discusses trends and strategies for the IBM i platform.

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 The i Can blog written by Dawn May, IBM i Business Architect, share “hidden gems” and best practices advice for IBM I technical professionals.  The IBM Champion program recognizes thought leaders from the business and technical community of IBM clients and business partners. These respected IBM i subject matter experts comment on a wide range of topics, and can be accessed at  For RPG developers, IBM Champions Jon Paris and Susan Ganter’s iDevelopment blog is an outstanding resource.  IBM Technical Conferences feature Power Systems and IBM i topics for IT professionals.

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Special Notices

This document was developed for IBM offerings in the United States as of the date of publication. IBM may not make these offerings available in other countries, and the information is subject to change without notice. Consult your local IBM business contact for information on the IBM offerings available in your area.

IBM may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter in this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents. Send license inquires, in writing, to IBM Director of Licensing, IBM Corporation, New Castle Drive, Armonk, NY 10504-1785 USA.

All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

The information contained in this document has not been submitted to any formal IBM test and is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees either expressed or implied.

All examples cited or described in this document are presented as illustrations of the manner in which some IBM products can be used and the results that may be achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual client configurations and conditions.

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IBM is not responsible for printing errors in this document that result in pricing or information inaccuracies. All prices shown are IBM's United States suggested list prices and are subject to change without notice; reseller prices may vary. IBM hardware products are manufactured from new parts, or new and serviceable used parts. Regardless, our warranty terms apply. Any performance data contained in this document was determined in a controlled environment. Actual results may vary significantly and are dependent on many factors including system hardware configuration and software design and configuration. Some measurements quoted in this document may have been made on development-level systems. There is no guarantee these measurements will be the same on generally- available systems. Some measurements quoted in this document may have been estimated through extrapolation. Users of this document should verify the applicable data for their specific environment.

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